Dealing with painting employees who have been filling space while you tried to meet your contractural obligations is easy.  Thank them for their contribution and lay them off (making sure you have obeyed your provincial labour laws in doing so of course.)  If they go to your competition, all the better.  The better painters for your Vancouver Painting Company are tricky.  You dont want them to either go to your competition.  Determine if they intend to stay in the market if they are laid off as a Vancouver painting contractor.  If so…see if you can set them up as a sub contractor for your Vancouver painting company to reduce your obligations but still have them in your stable.  Yes they have the potential to become your competition that way..but if you maintain a healthy relationship with them, you can trust they will feel indebted to you to some degree and wont hurt your business in the long run.

First, look at your long term employees.  Often, its these employees that become the biggest burden on a company trying to weather an economic storm.  Their painting salaries may have been ratched up and beyond their production value simply because they have been with you for a long time.  Letting some Vancouver painting contractors (employees) is a legitimate option, but has to be weighed against the possibility that they will become your competition.  In the paint trade…in the Vancouver area…that is a particularly difficult problem, as the workforce is fluid and its not hard to ex painting employees to set themselves up in the painting business.  Your best chance to get their salaries in line is to renegotiate the salary with non monetary compensations.  If you dont have a benefit plan, it might be time to renegotiate salaries and start one so you can play a reduction in rates against the increased security that a benefit package offers.  Can you split compensation between money and equity.  Your long term employees have seen you operate and like what they see.  They may be willing to invest in you.  Remember, there are great benefits to employees to remain employees with you during a recession, so keep in mind the bargaining power that the current slowdown gives you.

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What should your employees make?  Certainly, they should make what they earn, but finding out exactly what that is can be tough, and getting them to that point even tougher.  The general range for pay for a Vancouver’s Best Painter in Canada today can be anywhere between $10 and $35 per hour.  YOu need to ask around to friends in the business to find out what employees are being paid in your area.  Anectdotal evidence suggests that non union rates for employment in construction have gone down between five and 10 per cent in the last year.

There is much that is unpleasant for a Vancouver painter about a slowing economy.  For ‘glass-half-full’ painters however, a slowing economy affords an opportunity to re-evaluate business practices and make adjustments in anticipation of future growth.  The salary structure within a painting company can be very c0mplex, and, as painting employees in the Vancouver area come and go…unbalanced.  As a painting contractor company in the Vancouver area retools and downsizes, it should be able to adjust its salary structure to rebalance the ledger.

Starting at the top

First, look at your own salary.  As business contracts and jobs become harder to come by, no doubt you can expect to work longer hours and take on more of the day-to-day tasks.  Should you then pay yourself more?  Should you just work more and take home the same pay?  Should you take home less?  The answer is, once you have adjusted for your new circumstances you should be taking home the same or more, but never less.  In other words, the choices you make regarding how you downsize your painting business should have as their primary goal protecting your personal income and your lifestyle.  That is the privilege of painting business ownership.  Is it fair?  Absolutely.  You are your best employee.  You care the most, work the hardest, have the most experience with the painting company and have the biggest stake in its success.   There is no better formula for employee motivation than to pay that kind of employee as much as you can afford.

In addition, you must always consider the opportunity cost you pay for being in business.  You hear is most often expressed when you hear your peers say:  “For that money, I am better off staying home”  The point is that reducing your income makes no sense when you could just close up shop and work somewhere else for a lot less hassle, fewer hours and more money.

What You Should Earn As A Painter or Painting Contractor In the Vancouver Area

If you are a painter in the home renovation trade in the Vancouver area, you are probably not being paid enough.  Rick Anderson from Vancouver’s Best Painters says that owners of general contracting and subtrade companies should be earning at least 10% of their companys gross income in consideration for the many hours they work.